Enrico Nicola Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio on April 16, 1924. Like most Hollywood success stories, he rose from inauspicious beginnings by toiling as a musical assistant and composer of secondary cues for Universal Studios. After receiving his big break with his first complete major score, Orsons Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL, Mancini quickly forged a working relationship with director Blake Edwards which spanned all of their major work in both film and television. Furthermore, Mancini became the first composer to successfully fuse song writing (usually in the jazz idiom) and score together in the minds of the American public. However, he was also a classically trained composer whose gifts for the nuances of cinematic tone and form were regrettably overshadowed by his popular hits. His death on June14, 1994 robbed the film and music communities of one of their greatest and most innovative talents, but fortunately his music continues to live on with movie fans everywhere.
